7 posts tagged “random”

So I'll share with you this interesting little discovery:

Fun Fact #1025: I've found that I write better while picturing everything I say in a British/Australian accent much like the one Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw has.

The more you know...

-blake.

Those above words are probably my favorite to hear whenever I'm bored and with friends (which happens often). Since I can't play video games for an extended amount of time, and I don't write or play piano that much anymore, my main hobbies are just "hanging out" and driving around. Neither of which are incredibly productive, but I do think they are slowly and surely putting me back on track to the human I was a few years ago. Tonight was a Wal-Mart run night, and it was probably the most fun I've had all break. Originally, I was going to head up to Long Island today to pick up a camcorder (after various problems with ripping Star-Nosed Moles to DVD), but thankfully I did not need to make the four hour up-and-back that probably would have sucked out the last remaining remnants of what you people would call a soul. Unfortunately, I did not find out that I wasn't making the trip until 3:30, so my afternoon was spent bracing myself for the long drive and playing Rock Band with my friends Adam and Curley. We were also planning on seeing Cloverfield tonight (Yeah, I don't care if it sucks, I still want to see it. Go away.), but seeing as you're getting a blog about Wal-Mart, that obviously didn't happen.

At around 6:00, we started to get ravenously hungry, which, of course, meant leaving the house. And in New Jersey, leaving the house for food can only lead to one of two things: a White Castle or a diner. Since I'm a vegetarian, I naturally opted for the latter option, and we were diner-bound. After some good old disco fries (in vegetarian gravy, thank you very much!) and an omelette, we were left with a check, indigestion, and no sense of direction for the night. Since I am undoubtedly going to make my life into a play someday, and this scene will undoubtedly be in that play, I'll give you a sneak peek at this particular portion.

Waitress drops the check on the table. Adam, James and Curley stare at it, then at Adam, who reluctantly pulls out a credit card and goes to pay it. Curley and James sit at the table in awkward silence. Beat. Double-Beat. Triple-Beat. Adam comes back to the table just as James starts:

James: ...Now what?

Beat.

Adam: Wal-Mart run?

The above excerpt will surely be the ultimate moment of the play. I'm sure you can already see the rampant emotion even in text, and can picture us all up on a stage, as real as that night. The audience will laugh, then cry. Women and children will be asked to leave as they get so emotional they become a hazard to the people around them. Then it will pass as quickly as it came, and leave the viewer with a sense that something wondrous just happened. But what, exactly?

Yes, I know that was a tangent, but I had fun writing it. Don't make fun of me!

Anyway, we go to Wal-Mart, and engage in a few activities that probably would have gotten us out of the store if people bothered watching us. These activities included:

• Playing basketball with the bouncy balls. How cliche.
• Tossing and catching a toy called the Orbit Ball, which was marketed as "Fun to throw! Fun to catch!"
• Trying to do the same with balls that did not have the orbit ball's label, but it just wasn't the same without throwing or catching them.
• Playing with the volume of the automobile stereo systems.
• Trying to put tires on layaway.
• Seeing what would be the funniest purchase along with a box of condoms. Winner: Mr. Curley, with a bottle of deer pheromones.
• Hiding behind plants in the garden section, then coming out when someone walked by, saying "Oh, herro!" in an Asian accent, and trying to shake the person's hand.
• Playing hide and seek
• Playing tag
• Playing tag with other people
• Lounging on couches that were on display. On shelves about three feet above the ground.
• Adam and I wanting Curley to page us saying "A-NI-MAL! A-NI-MAL!"

This dog was the ugliest thing I have ever seen. It looked like a chihuahua, mixed with a dachshund, and beaten nine-tenths of the way to death with an ugly stick. This thing was ugly as all hell, but it was also exceptionally long, giving it the opportunity for corny and punny love messages inscribed on its side. Of course, it had hearts on it, but it also had a phrase which I honestly thought I was reading wrong for a few seconds.

"I love this much!"

We took a picture of it, just to make sure that we weren't hallucinating. This picture will be up here sometime tomorrow, for your viewing pleasure. I hope it'll make your day as much as it made mine.

-blake

There once was a man from Nantucket
Who heard rumors 'bout him and a bucket
Well, he said quite sincere
To all who would hear,
"I never decided to fuck it!"

Well this hurt the poor bucket's feelings,
She didn't find lying appealing
Though they were never in bed,
She'd given him head
And took quite a few while a'kneeling.

(I made that up last night after my haiku. It amused me, at least.)

I'm probably going to be very scattered here, but I feel that I should at least put something up here. I've been very unproductive this past month. I've decided to semi-permanently step away from the piano for now. I do this for a few reasons. First off, I'm no good at classical piano, so why keep trying to fix something that fights you every step of the way? I just don't see a reason to, so I'm not going to. Second off, I can't write real lyrics. I'm pretty bad at being lyrical in general, and even if I'm not, I don't have the creative spark needed to make anything semi-postable right now. I'm trying as hard as I can not to put my Vox in a coma until everything passes (we've been over the "everything" many times right now, it's too hackneyed to keep repeating it), but if it comes to that, so be it. I don't want this to turn into "yet another emo blog", so if I have to not post at all in order to not post depressing stuff, so be it. Sorry, but that's just the way I feel.

Also, I see that Vox has updated its look. I like it a lot more than the older look, but for convenience purposes as opposed to aesthetics. Honestly, I think it looks like crap. The whole space-age clean is older than the internet, and Vox isn't Apple, so they can't get away with putting shadows on everything. That being said, it runs quite well, and I no longer have to scratch my head to do X, Y, and/or Z task at the same time. Which is a plus, I guess.

Okay, that's honestly all I have for right now. I don't know why, but I just cannot bring myself to write. But in all seriousness, keep urging me to write. A few people (you know who you are) have been badgering me to do so for the last two weeks, and it's good to know that people care.

Or at the very least, you people read. And that's more important in my book.

-blake.

P.S. I like writing haikus.

Poetry is art...
Very complicated art
That I cannot make.

I'd like to start this note out by saying that I wish I knew who to tag in it. I really, really do. But there's just so many awesome people that I can't simply tag at random. You have to be interested in what I'm doing to appreciate the contents of this note. So I figure that everybody who matters will glance at this note and either be interested and keep reading, or scoff and back off. I strongly urge to do to the former, because I need all the help I can get.

That being said, this note (obviously) is for casting calls. Casting calls for what, you ask? For a movie. What movie, you ask? Well, that's an interesting little story. The Coalition Of Cool Kids at Bard recently put forth a movie-making challenge that I and a few others are participating in. The challenge: to make a movie, a loose parody of "Snakes on a Plane", entitled "Blanks on a Blank". The blanks were for us to fill in; each team would get an animal and a form of transportation at random, and we would make a movie out of it. A pretty cool concept, no? Yes.

So I need people to star/co-star/co-co-star/wo

Screw the Vox question of the day, here's my question of the day:

Have you ever stopped and looked at rain under a spotlight? I'm talking sitting there under the light, not some tiny streetlight or anything, but like, stadium lights. And I'm also talking huge, fat raindrops just pouring down. Just sit there and watch them for like...10 minutes.

Have you done that before? If not, why not?

Go out and do it, right now.

So to catch all of you up who haven't been reading me at all, I'm in the middle of an incredibly large creative block right now. It's been lasting for about the last two weeks of my life, and it's absolutely horrible. And I wish that I could say it was just a bad case of writer's block, but it's so much more than that. I can't write, yes, but I also can't even formulate good ideas. Define good ideas? Well, I do comedy, I regularly come up with about 2 story ideas a week that I don't start at all, and I'm witty and quick on my feet (which is only good for 1) Picking up people and 2) Improv, neither of which, coincidentally, I've felt like doing recently). I'm trying so so so so so so hard not to turn this into a fucking livejournal post right now, but it's really hard not to, simply because it's exactly how I feel right now. I don't really know how to explain it in any other simplistic terms save this one:

I feel listless, plain and simple. There's a few big ideas that've gone through my head, but nothing that I've really expanded on save this:

This summer, I am going to hitchhike as far across America as possible from May 30th to July 1st, then turn back and come home. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're going to say; it's just like On The Road... or is it? To make things a little bit more challenging, and a lot more interesting for us, we've decided to only take the following things:
1) A blank journal
2) A few disposable cameras
3) Medical stuff and one or two changes of clothes
4) Identification
5) An emergency credit card and cellphone.
6) A towel

That's right, gentlemen and lady, we're going to hitchhike across the USA without any form of money. It's going to be one hell of an amazing trip, both in the literal sense, and in the mental sense. I think that above all things, it'll give us a sense of just how vital (or otherwise) money is to our existence here in America. I doubt that it'll work without a hitch (we'll probably have to use the credit card somehow or somewhere), but if it does, that'll simply be mind-blowing.

So yeah, that's my summer. I'll probably post more on the stops we plan on making and give people chances to get in touch with me/Zack if you'd be so kind to shack us for the night or drive us places. None of it's finite, but I'm sure that you lovely folks will be loving and accommodating, especially a few of my college pals.

Besides that, there's not a lot to go into today. I'm working with whatever free time I have on a short story/novel that I plan on having at least rough by the end of November. I'll post more of it as more of it comes into play (maybe I'll even get a section up here tonight). Also, I've been talking about doing a rant or two, but the mood hasn't struck me since Saturday night. As I said before, maybe my mood will change and I'll get something up here tonight. Probably not, but keep your fingers crossed!

Ooh, also an errata: For all my Bardians who read this, stand-up comedy has been changed this week. From now on, it's every other Wednesday at 9:30, NOT 10:00! Small change, but I know I'll be going up in the first half hour. Hope to see everyone there!

-blake.

Well, this is certainly new and refreshing. It's almost like that time I had a Blogger, but more customizable. I think I prefer this the best out of anything I've used so far, and I've only been fiddling with it for about an hour. That's pretty nice. But anyway, I guess I'm just going to say what I plan to do here, and then go on as if I've had this forever and ever amen.

I'm James Blake. I'm a first-year student at Bard College, majoring in the vast field of Undecided. I might do music (I play classical piano and I'm fucking around with trombone), I might do creative writing, I might even do something with acting. I like a lot of stuff, so naturally, my interests are varied. I've got a lot of shit going on in my life right now; most importantly:

-I'm working on two or three stories right now (depending on the time and my mood), in addition to one screenplay. These are very near and dear to my heart--the screenplay in particular--so I'd like to at least make some dents in them. Also, National Novel Writing Month is in November, and I plan on unofficially participating (doing the 50,000 words for myself, not for the sake of others).

-I'm also planning a rather large campaign for when I come home for winter break (yeah, that's right, Dungeons and Dragons. Shut up). By large here, I mean sheerly massive. There's no real reason for doing this other than boredom; we're probably going to get close to nowhere in it.

-In piano-land, I still have to get back up to speed with my technique. The practices are going fairly well, but I just got hit with not one, but two accompaniment pieces that I have to learn while not in tip-top shape. These will pass in time, but it's still rather stressful. I'm also making a score for 'Black Cadillacs' by Modest Mouse for piano that I plan to do on some open mike night. Maybe I'll get back into the singing/songwriting scene, but not until I have less stuff to do.

-I also need to start thinking up new comedy things. I do a lot of comedy, and Bard has a stand-up club that performs every other Wednesday. After we go up, I post the stuff (usually a day or two later) up here. My debut's already up, so hopefully the rest of it will follow.

-Finally, I'm going to try getting a band together, or at least a way to electronically compose music on my own without GarageBand. I've had a lot of song ideas that I've toyed around in my head, and I've even written down a few, which is quite serious for me.

Oh, I almost forgot. I want a radio show as well >=3 . Talk about juggling things!

As soon as I have interesting things to say, or interesting stuff to post, it'll come up on here. I've got a bunch of weekly stuff that I'll introduce everybody to, and yeah, it'll be fun.

-blake.